Who can

"measure" such a line as this, "with sublime delight?"

And then what sort of verse is introduced into the lauded Inti

mations?

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday ;

Or, take another specimen-

Oh evil day! If I were sullen

While Earth herself is adorning ;

This sweet May-morning,

And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand vallies far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, &c.

Will you have any more? There are stores of such beauties as these in this glorious production. Here is a couplet for you

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness.

Here is another

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral.

One more, and this the last

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature-&c.

Was Donne ever worse than this? What would Gray have said to it? If he had heard this praised by any of the public judges of literature as fine Ode-writing, he would have flung his own lyre into the sea, and forsworn the Muses altogether,

C

rather than have run the risk of exposing himself to the Midaslike judgment of such long-eared critics.

H.-I protest against your way of selecting a line or two of imperfect composition as a specimen of an entire poem. general character of the Ode you now quote from is truly noble. It is exquisitely thoughtful and imaginative.

A. You will not allow me to give a single brick as a specimen of a bad house; but you are always ready enough yourself to give a single brick as a specimen of a good one.

H.-The best poets are sometimes bad, but the worst are never good. When we meet with a line or two of extraordinary excellence of genuine poetry-we see at once what the writer is capable of we meet with an undoubted proof of genius ; because an uninspired writer never produces such lines even by accident, though a Shakspeare may sometimes write like the meanest scribbler in existence. It is flagrantly unjust to judge of a writer by his defects only. We estimate the strength of the eagle by his highest flight-not by his lowest.

No. II.

CROLY-HUNT-BYRON-CARLYLE-JEFFREY-WILSON WAKEFIELD-CRABBE, &c.

H.-I shall never talk with you again on the subject of Wordsworth. You are quite incorrigible.

A. So be it. I see you do not like to be opposed in your own opinions and take it for granted that I must necessarily be wrong, because I have the whole body of living critics against me; but are they not, every man jack of them, against themselves that is their former selves? There is not one of our periodical publications of any standing that has not, in former times, ridiculed and abused the poets whom they now pretend to

idolize. Twenty or thirty years hence the stream will turn the other way again, and the herd of critics will wonder how such a feeble, egotistical sentimentalist as Wordsworth, could have maintained his ground for a single twelvemonth, especially at a time when the manly voice of Byron was ringing in the public ear and thrilling the public heart.

H.-Byron's day has gone by, and that of all his imitatorseven that of the Revd. George Croly.

A. I hardly think Croly was much of an imitator of Byron. He never aimed at the representation of the darker passions. There is something indeed like an echo of the noble poet's verse in some of Croly's Spenserian stanzas, and it is clear enough that he felt the might of Byron; but Croly is no poet. He is a writer of high sounding, hollow lyrics, and has a sort of false grandeur, a gaudiness of style, that vulgar judges often mistake for elevated genius. In all his verses there is not one touch of nature or true feeling. If you had ever seen Croly's stern, dark-browed, proud, ill-natured face, as I have done, and observed his pompous self-conceited manner of delivery, you would find it difficult to open his books with pleasure, even if they were much better than they are.

H.-My dear A- one would suppose, from the style in which you speak of poets that do not please you, that you were the most ill-natured, most arrogant and most unreasonable of menand really on this one point you are so-however candid and kind on all other occasions.

A. I cannot help confessing that I am apt to have my unfavourable opinion of a poet greatly strengthened by a reference to anything unamiable in his personal character. Wordsworth's immeasurable self-conceit, and Croly's stern cantankerousness make me very little disposed to overrate their poetical merits. You have heard of course many of the anecdotes in circulation illustrative of the Laker's exorbitant and all-absorbing vanity. When one of Scott's Novels (Rob Roy, I think,) first came out, the new treasure was the subject of talk at Wordsworth's table. Instead of taking any part in the laudation of Scott, he went to

his library, and brought back the first volume of the novel. He then read aloud, in his usual solemn, self-applauding manner, the motto of the first chapter, taken from himself, closed the book, as if it contained nothing more worth perusal, and stalked back with it to its shelf. The tone of his prefaces confirms the authenticity of anecdotes of this nature. As to Croly, the noise his disputes make in the vestry and the newspapers, is what no other clergyman could endure without shame and self-reproach. Like Dr. Bryce, he is the fierce editor of a fierce Tory paper. H.—I think you are mistaken about the newspaper. A friend of mine, not knowing Croly's address, but hearing that he was editor of the Britannia, sent a letter to him addressed to the care of the printer of that paper. Croly in his reply somewhat testily remarked that my friend's epistle had reached him “through a printer of whom he knew nothing;" and that St. Stephens, Walbrook, was his right address.

A. And do you really believe him-clergyman though he be? Why all the world knows that the leaders of the Britannia are from the pen of Croly. Who else could indite such inflated, grandiloquent, bombastic Tory rot? While you are quoting letters permit me to read you one from Basil Hall, who, though a Tory himself, and a friend of Croly's, was not altogether blind to his defects as a writer. It is in this drawer with a number of other Autographs :-I have it—

MY DEAR SIR,

Queen's Terrace, Sunday Evening.

I have read your paper with considerable interest, chiefly, I believe, from knowing the able and accomplished writer. To my taste, however, the style is too stilted-too many fine words and finely turned sentences and showy images. I prefer the vigorous simplicity of the Times. It would be impossible to speak what is written in the Britannia-nobody would use such sentences in conversation, and this I hold to be one of the best tests of composition, and I rather wonder at Croly using so much eloquence to express such simple and manly thoughts.

I am, most truly yours,

BASIL HALL.

Now I ask you whether, on coupling this letter from a friend of Croly's with the internal evidence afforded by the style of the Britannia's leaders, you can have the shadow of a doubt as to the editorship of that paper? And yet this clergyman of the Church of England, without the courage to venture on a direct untruth, insinuates that he has nothing to do with the conduct of a Sunday newspaper, by affirming that he knows nothing of the printer. But what could be expected from a minister of the Gospel who has attempted to white-wash the moral character of George the Fourth?

H.-It is quite possible that Croly never saw the face of the printer of the Britannia. No one thinks the less of Sir Walter Scott for having repeatedly denied the authorship of the Scotch novels. Dr. Johnson, by no means a person of loose principles, always maintained the right of a man to keep his own secret in matters literary by a flat denial of authorship; because there really is no other way of defending such a secret from the impertinent and the curious. I have heard some men speak far more favorably of Croly, than you do, and who know him much more intimately. Whether he be a true poet or not I will not pretend to determine; but that he is a writer of no ordinary power is pretty clearly shown, both in his tragedy of Cataline and in his highly imaginative novel entitled Salathiel, in which, I think, there are many passages of very splendid writing. Say what you will, he is not an every-day author; and though he is too much of the old Tory school, and would act more consistently with his sacred profession if he did not publish Sunday politics, I have good reason to believe that he is highly respected in private life.

A.-Croly's denial of the editorship of the Britannia reminds me of Theodore Hook's disclaimer in the London John Bull, when it was under his exclusive editorship, and when he wrote almost every line of original matter that it contained. If you will open that number of the Quarterly which is at your elbow, and turn to the article on Theodore, you will find what I allude to. Hook writes a letter to himself and answers it.